The first phase of the Active Audience project in Great Britain has been designed to examine the nature of the television audience in terms of why people watch television and how they respond to what they are being offered, and presents life-style as the basis for defining audience groups. (Author/CMV)

Reviews 25 years of experimental research into production and presentation variables, such as technical variations, content and organization strategies, and performer variables. Suggestions are made for continuing research in specific areas, and a bibliography of 45 references is appended. (Author/BK)

Unintended effects of television production techniques are explored using behavioral as well as attitudinal means. Results extend previous investigations into visual presentation techniques by indicating their summative effects. (CMV)

Enabling people to communicate could and should become a fourth function for television. Such a development is likely in the post-industrial world. (Author)

Nine televised news stories were presented to 60 college students under newscaster-only, newscaster-plus-film, or newscaster-plus-stills formats, and information gain was tested using a multiple-choice questionnaire administered immediately after viewing. Overall learning differences were nonsignificant. (Author)

Argues that television has unique educational characteristics that separate it from other media and have implications for teaching and learning. Discussion of distributional and social, control, and symbolic (audiovisual) characteristics is based on published surveys and on research carried out at the Open University. Thirteen references are…

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of presentation mode, picture content, and serial position upon the recall of brief television news items. Fifteen items were presented in either video- or audio-only mode to 40 subjects. The results are discussed in terms of various imagery hypotheses. (Author)

Traces the developmental history of Sesame Street from the initial efforts to obtain funding and set goals to present day importation of programs to other countries. It is recommended that Sesame Street producers incorporate Piagetian theories on cognitive development in order to realize learning gains. (Author)